


A Fine Line Between Them

by Cousin Shelley (CousinShelley)



Category: American Horror Story: Murder House
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, F/M, Fandom Stocking 2013, Gen, Implied/Referenced Incest, Parent/Child Incest, Past Underage Sex, Racist Language, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-07 19:21:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1123459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CousinShelley/pseuds/Cousin%20Shelley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tate talks to Dr. Harmon about his fantasies of violence and death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fine Line Between Them

**Author's Note:**

> (It's been almost a year with no word, so I guess it was time to take the giftee's name and my note to her off. I left it in the collection, though, because that's what it was for.)
> 
> I always suspected Constance of being a little overly affectionate toward Tate, but I wondered if that was just my interpretation. After watching both Asylum and what's been aired of Coven so far, with an incest theme running through both of those, I'm convinced I was right. It's my head-canon now, at least.

Tate had just told Dr. Harmon about an actual dream he had of himself with death’s face painted over his. Blood, screams, pleading, bullets. Things Tate had experienced in a fantasy, but never so vivid a dream.

“You smiled.”

Tate shook his head at Dr. Harmon. “What?”

“As you were telling me about your dream, Tate. You smiled. The first time today. You enjoy the idea of hurting people, at least when it’s not real and just imagination or dreams?”

“I--no, I don’t think so. I don’t like to hurt people.” He shrugged. “Maybe.”

***

Tate's mother had sent Addie to her room, and Larry would be gone for a few days on business. So his mother was alone, had a few drinks with dinner, and seemed especially bitter even though she kept laughing and smiling.

Tate knew this type of night. He could taste it in the air, in the way his mother had doted on him over dinner and touched his shoulder each time she passed while up to fetch something from the refrigerator or offer seconds.

When she called for him to come to her room because she needed help with something, he went slowly.

“Tate, darling, help your mother with this curtain rod. I seem to have dislodged it while trying to make sure that Jew across the street can’t see in my window. He tries, you know. Tries to watch me change my clothes.”

“Does he?” Tate stepped up on her dressing chair to put the rod back into place.

“He peeps in, hoping for a glimpse of me naked. Does that surprise you?”

“No, Mother.”

“I’m sure it’s hard for you to understand with those teenagers and their young breasts and thighs in your face all day, but I was a knock-out when I was your age, and I’m still considered beautiful today, at least by people with some culture and appreciation for the finer things.”

"Or dirty, peeping Jews, Mother?"

Constance scoffed. She already wore her satiny robe, as if ready for bed. Her hand cupped the back of his thigh, just below his buttock. “Don’t fall, honey. Can’t have you running around with broken bones, or scars. Not my beautiful boy.” She laughed softly. “You won’t have to work a day in your life with a face and a build like yours. Don’t let clumsiness change all that for you.” Her hand moved a little against his leg, just enough to make Tate want to bat it away. But he knew better.

Tate took far longer with the curtain rod than it warranted, just so he could keep concentrating on something and wouldn’t be expected to look at Constance.

“Now that old bastard won't get a free show at night. Let him woo someone properly, or pay to look at beautiful things the way other people do. Don’t you think I’m beautiful, Tate?”

“Sure, Mother. Yes.”

“Oh, honey, you could at least say it like you mean it.” Her hand left his thigh as she paced slowly around her bedroom. “I suppose that’s a trait all men share--insincerity. I'd hoped you’d be the exception.”

He couldn’t pretend to be fixing the rod any longer. Tate closed the curtains carefully and stepped down. “All done. I’ve got some homework, so--”

Constance smiled and took Tate’s arm, pulling him down next to her on the edge of the bed. “Come and sit a spell with your mother.” She finger-combed his hair back from his forehead. “My lovely boy. The world will be your oyster, you know. You only have to find it within yourself to crack it open and reach for that pearl.”

Tate looked at her, afraid of how to respond.

“I do wish you were more motivated and had a little more . . . grit. And you should smile more often. But even without those things, you will always be my favorite child.” She kept stroking his his hair, her fingertips sometimes caressing his forehead. Her other hand rested on his thigh.

Tate’s stomach lurched. He forced a smile that he hoped looked as horrible as it felt. “I guess that makes me lucky. Being your favorite.”

“Yes,” Constance said and leaned closer.

“Because that means you won’t ever have the married man you’re fucking kill me because I’m inconvenient, right?”

Constance shot to her feet and slapped Tate across the face. “How dare you speak to me like that, when I provide everything for you. I’ve given up so much for my children, and I’d give up even more to see you succeed in life, Tate Langdon.”

He didn’t reach up to rub his cheek, though he wanted to. Instead, he kept his head turned to the side where it had stopped, not looking at his mother.

Constance dropped to her knees in front of him and put her hands on his thighs. She cried as she spoke. “Your beauty will open doors, but so did mine. _So did mine._ And look where I am now. I don’t regret having you, Tate, but had I made different choices who knows how far I’d have gone? Who knows where I’d be now? I just don’t want to see you make the same mistakes I did.”

“I won’t,” he said through his teeth. “Because I’m nothing like you.”

“You’re more like me than you pretend, mister. I know you as well as I know myself.” Her hands moved on his thighs, and she pressed herself between his knees, leaning close. “I know how distracted I always was by wide shoulders and a narrow waist, and soulful eyes . . . . The girls your age all want to know what it’s like to be had by boys like you, and I know you’re tempted, but you must understand that they don’t really care about you, Tate. They want to trap you into their little lives by letting you knock them up. They’ll spread their slutty legs and put that rope around your neck for the rest of your life.”

She rested her hand over his zipper. “You can avoid all that, with my help. You know how much I care about you . . . so you never need to worry about some scheming piece of ass trapping you into a marriage full of strife and unhappiness and . . . and _ordinaryness_. Never have to put up with the inexperienced fumbling of mere girls when you deserve nothing less than a real woman’s touch . . . .”

Tate clenched his jaw and leaned back as she pushed at his chest. He felt her touch, her hands and her mouth, and closed his eyes, thinking of curtain rods and police investigations and how much his mother loved him.

A few days later, when an enraged Constance threw Adelaide in her screaming closet because she’d refused to eat her breakfast, Tate waited until his mother went into her bedroom to lie down to relieve her headache. Then he pulled Addy out and broke every mirror that hung on the walls. Not long after, he set Larry on fire at his office building, and murdered 15 people at Westfield High.

***

“Maybe? Maybe you like the idea, the fantasy, of hurting people?” Ben Harmon lifted his eyebrows. “Maybe you should try to decide whether you do or not. We can work from there, once you understand a little better how you feel about it. I’m not trying to judge you, but knowing how you really feel will help us work together.”

“I don’t like to hurt people.”

Dr. Harmon smiled and shook his head. “I’m not asking you to figure it out this second, Tate. It could take time.”

“I _said_ I don’t like to hurt people. I just understand pain better than other things. I’m comfortable with pain.”

“Why do you think that is?”

Tate stared at him for a long time before answering. “My mother loves me.”

“I’m sure she does, since she’s sending you to me for help.”

“You don’t understand. Don't they say there's a fine line between love and hate? Maybe since I've had so much of her love, in the dream I decide to try hate on for size, see if it’s better. See if it fits.”

“Why would your mother's love drive you to try hate?”

“But now I love someone else, and that feels really good. It’s _real_ love, you know? The kind of love where I would never, ever hurt her. You’re not supposed to hurt the people you love, are you, Dr. Harmon?”

Ben took a deep breath and straightened, then uncrossed his legs and crossed them the opposite way. “No. You’re not supposed to. But sometimes you do, even when you don’t mean to.”

“I won’t _ever_ hurt her, _because_ I love her. I would kill anyone who hurt her. Anyone.” Tate looked at Dr. Harmon, hoping to convey through that look that he meant anyone, even her father. “Wouldn’t you kill to protect your wife, Dr. Harmon? To protect Violet.”

“That’s an urge I think most people can understand, even if they never act on it.”

“I’d act on it. In fact, a part of me looks forward to figuring out who might hurt her someday and hurting them first. Protecting her by removing the threat before it becomes one.”

“Tate, you never know who’s going to hurt the people you love, or why. “ He fidgeted in his seat. “Sometimes, the hurt comes completely unexpected.”

“So a couple innocent people suffer. That’s the price of protecting someone you love, right? The price of protecting and keeping your own close to you.”

“Why do you think you feel that way?”

Tate looked down and blinked back the tears that threatened to fall. He could hear Addy’s screams, feel Constance’s tongue against him, hear the roar of the fire that ate away most of Larry’s face, hear a chain dragging across the floor and the happy grunts of Beau who'd only ever wanted to play and be hugged.

“My mother has always told me I’m a lot like her. And it’s probably the truest thing she’s ever said in her life.”

When Tate left the session with Dr. Harmon, he passed a window that faced the house next door. Constance stood framed in it, a satiny dressing gown barely held closed by its tie. She looked pointedly at Tate before closing the curtains, not quite all the way. She left enough of a gap that Tate could see the swell of her breast and the dark triangle of hair between her legs when she let the gown drop.

Tate went to find Violet, and to figure out whether it would be better to try to have Dr. Harmon killed away from the house or kill him inside it. If it would hurt Violet more to miss him, it'd have to happen there.  


End file.
